Tommasi Viticoltori

The story

A 1902 Decision in Valpolicella

When Giacomo Battista Tommasi married Augusta in 1902, he was already farming the family's land in the hills of Valpolicella. The land was not new; what he decided to do with the wine was. In a zone where most production flowed out in bulk — pressed, barrelled, sold without a name into the trade — Giacomo chose a different direction: quality wine, tied to a specific place, sold under a name rather than by the barrel. It was a founding posture rather than a single dramatic moment, and no one event marks the shift. But more than a century later, those same Valpolicella Classica hillsides hold five named parcels — La Groletta, Conca d'Oro, Ca' Florian, Le Volpare, Le Fornaci — and the estate's Amarone still comes from those hills, built by the family that put its name on the first bottle.

From the atlas

Tommasi Viticoltori

At A Glance

The Producer

Tommasi Viticoltori is a fourth-generation family estate in Valpolicella Classica, the hillside heartland of the Valpolicella appellation west of Verona. The name is most associated with Amarone: a dried-grape red that is the defining wine of this zone and the wine around which the estate has built its 242 hectares of vineyards. Nine siblings and cousins each hold defined roles in the business and manage it jointly, an arrangement that has kept decision-making in family hands across more than a century of winemaking.

The Valpolicella holdings are the core: 115 hectares in Valpolicella Classica, where the Amarone crus sit, and 17 more in Valpantena. A further 110 hectares lie across other Veronese denominations, including the Garda shore at Desenzano del Garda, where Tommasi grows the Turbiana grapes for Le Fornaci Lugana. The two wines, Amarone and Lugana, cover nearly opposite ends of the estate's stylistic range.

Place

Valpolicella Classica is the original, hillside zone of the Valpolicella denomination, running west of Verona across a series of narrow valleys. The Classica designation matters on a label because it points to the older, higher-altitude parcels rather than the flatter, extended-zone vineyards added to the denomination later. Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG is the zone's most demanding wine: grapes are harvested, dried for months to concentrate their sugars, then fermented fully dry to produce a powerful red with high alcohol and a characteristic bitter edge on the finish.

Desenzano del Garda, where Le Fornaci is grown, is a town on the southern shore of Lake Garda, roughly forty kilometres west of Verona. The Lugana DOC runs along that southern shoreline. The lake moderates temperature swings, and the Turbiana grape, which carries the Lugana appellation, produces a white wine with more weight and texture than most northern Italian whites.

Soil And Site

Tommasi identifies three cru vineyards in Valpolicella Classica as the source for its Amarone: La Groletta, Conca d'Oro and Ca' Florian. The Amarone blend draws specifically from La Groletta and Conca d'Oro, hillside parcels where the elevation and aspect shape the fruit concentration that appassimento then amplifies.

Le Fornaci is planted across three parcels at Desenzano del Garda, each with different soils. One parcel rests on layered calcareous and clay ground; the other two are sandier and rich in silt. That variation across the three parcels contributes to the wine's layered character, with the clay giving body and the sandier ground adding a lighter, more aromatic component. Vines are trained to Guyot at high density, a planting system that limits yield per vine and concentrates flavour in each cluster.

Story

Giacomo Battista Tommasi married Augusta in 1902, and the estate dates its winemaking from that moment. The Veronese hills they farmed were already planted with the grape varieties that would later define Amarone, though the appellation itself took decades more to acquire its formal legal shape. Tommasi grew alongside the appellation, becoming one of the established family producers present during the period when Amarone shifted from a local specialty to an internationally traded wine.

Four generations later, the business is run by nine family members working across defined roles rather than consolidated under a single heir. That governance model, collective and departmentalised, has produced a range that spans from a straightforward Valpolicella Superiore to an Amarone Riserva at the top, with each tier occupying a specific position in both style and price. The 242-hectare landholding and the breadth of the range reflect a slow accumulation across generations rather than a single expansion event.

Vineyards And Cellar

Appassimento is the cellar method that separates Amarone from every other Italian red. After harvest, the Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella and Oseleta grapes from La Groletta and Conca d'Oro are laid out to dry for approximately three months. Water evaporates, sugars concentrate, and the grape skins begin to develop the complex dried-fruit and spice compounds that will define the wine's nose. Fermentation in stainless steel runs for 25 days at 25 to 30 degrees Celsius, long enough to convert the concentrated sugars fully dry. The wine then moves to 35-hectolitre Slavonian oak casks for three years. The large-format casks add a slow, oxidative breath without loading the wine with new-oak flavour.

Le Fornaci follows a different logic. The Turbiana grapes ferment and then spend approximately three months on the lees and fine yeasts in tank before moving to stainless steel for maturation. Lees contact builds texture and a faint creaminess without oak influence, keeping the wine's fruit and mineral character upfront.

Wines

Tommasi names four wines as the essence of its Valpolicella Classica range: Amarone, Ripasso, Rafaèl and Amarone Riserva.

The Amarone della Valpolicella Classico DOCG is the flagship. Dried for three months and aged three years in large oak, it is a full-bodied red with preserved-fruit richness, bitter spice, black pepper, liquorice and cocoa in the nose and a dry, substantial palate. A review of the 2018 vintage noted fine-grained tannin, freshness, savouriness and concentration, with the kind of compact, layered build that points to long-term ageing.

The Ripasso is made by refermentation of Valpolicella base wine on the Amarone grape skins after pressing. It takes on body, dried-fruit character and darker colour from that contact, sitting between the lightness of a straight Valpolicella and the weight of Amarone. Rafaèl is a Valpolicella Classico Superiore: lighter, fresher and intended for earlier drinking. The Amarone Riserva is the top tier, aged longer than the Classico and released only in suitable vintages.

Le Fornaci Lugana DOC, made from 100% Turbiana at Desenzano del Garda, completes the range. It is a white wine with a completely different profile from the Valpolicella reds: lees-aged in steel, it shows apple, wet stone, honeysuckle, bright citrus and a faint spritz from its time on fine yeasts.

In The Glass

The Amarone opens with a dark, concentrated nose: dried fig and cherry, bitter chocolate, black pepper and a thread of liquorice. Those aromas come directly from the appassimento process, where months of drying push the grape from fresh fruit toward something richer and more compressed. On the palate the wine is full-bodied and dry, with ripe dark fruit, firm tannin and a long finish where the bitterness typical of Valpolicella grapes comes through cleanly. The three years in Slavonian oak add a faint vanilla and tobacco note without softening the wine's core dryness. It has the density to develop for a decade or more in bottle.

Le Fornaci reads differently in every register. The nose is lighter and aromatic: red apple, honeysuckle, wet stone and a citrus edge. In the mouth the lees contact gives a gentle, round texture, and the acidity from the Turbiana grape keeps the finish clean and long. There is a subtle spritz from the steel maturation, adding freshness to a wine that carries more body than a standard northern Italian white.

A Bottle To Understand It

Start with the Amarone della Valpolicella Classico DOCG. It combines Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella and Oseleta from La Groletta and Conca d'Oro, dried for three months, fermented fully dry, and aged three years in large Slavonian oak. The glass delivers dark dried fruit, black pepper and bitter chocolate on the nose, then a full palate with firm tannin, ripe fruit and a long, dry finish. The bitterness on the finish is characteristic of the variety and the method. This is a wine to drink with food or to cellar; it does not open up immediately, but a few years of bottle age bring out the dried-fruit complexity and soften the tannin without losing the wine's density.

Anecdote

Giacomo Battista Tommasi married Augusta in 1902, in the hills west of Verona that would one day carry the Valpolicella Classica denomination on their labels. The grapes were already there: Corvina and Rondinella had been growing on those slopes for generations, though no one yet called the wine Amarone and no appellation rules governed how it was made. Giacomo Battista farmed the parcels, dried the grapes through the autumn months in the old way, and made a wine that his family drank and sold locally. More than a century later his great-grandchildren run the estate together, nine of them with specific named responsibilities across a 242-hectare holding. The La Groletta and Conca d'Oro parcels that supply the Amarone fruit today are among the original vineyards Giacomo Battista worked. The wine has a DOCG on its label now; the parcels are the same.

Final Word

Tommasi is a Valpolicella estate with a clear centre of gravity. The Amarone is the wine the family built around, and the cru parcels, the appassimento drying, and the Slavonian oak ageing give it a traceable character across vintages. Le Fornaci Lugana offers a genuinely different register from the same family, made from a different grape on a different shore. Between the two wines, the estate covers the range from a white built on acidity and lees texture to a red built on concentration and time.

Sources

• https://tommasiwine.it/en/tenuta/
• https://tommasiwine.it/prodotto/le-fornacibr-luganabr-doc/
• https://tommasiwine.it/prodotto/amarone-della-valpolicella-classicobr-docg/
• https://www.wineenthusiast.com/buying-guide/tommasi-2024-le-fornaci-turbiana-lugana/
• https://vintus.com/wines/lugana-le-fornaci/tommasi-lugana-2024/
• https://www.tommasi.com/james-suckling-rewards-tommasi-iconic-red-wines/?lang=en